Darkness Falls
by Lucillia
Summary: Harry Dresden is called to help out in a town he only remembers because Justin DuMorne had thrown him into the car and sped out of town at three times the posted speed limit after less than a day despite renting a room for a week. xover w/ Darkness Falls
1. Prologue: Matilda Dixon

A long time ago, there was a witch named Matilda Dixon who lived in a town in Massachusetts called Darkness Falls. She wasn't a bad witch or a mean witch, in fact she was quite nice and well loved by all of her neighbors, especially the local children whom she used to entertain with stories. The hundred and fifty year old woman had also been well regarded by the White Council of which she had been a part.

One of Matilda's hobbies that would seem quite unusual unless one knew of Matilda's career and the fact that there was a Warlock in the area was her habit of collecting the teeth the local children lost and giving them money in exchange. For the first tooth lost, the child would receive a shiny copper penny, for any molars, a small silver coin, and for their final baby tooth, a gold coin. It was because of this hobby, that Matilda had been called the "Tooth Fairy" by the local villagers. Matilda did this not for the recognition it gave her, but to prevent the children's teeth from being used against them. Each tooth she collected was carefully ground into a fine powder and burned.

The Warlock who lived in the woods nearby - having grown tired of Matilda thwarting his plans - attacked Matilda in the dead of the night. Matilda ended up surviving the encounter which destroyed her home and left her with a curse which slowly ate her inside and out. The Wardens eventually caught up with and dealt with the rogue wizard, and a gentleman named Ebenezar McCoy found a counter to the curse, but it was too late and the damage had already been done. By the time the progression of the curse had been halted, Matilda was badly disfigured and the light of the sun would burn her wasted flesh if she stepped out into it.

To spare the villagers the horrors of the sight of her, she took to wearing her most concealing clothes and a porcelain mask to hide her ravaged face. Since moving about during the day was exceedingly painful, she took to going out either at night or when it was completely overcast. This caused some of the more superstitious locals to become suspicious of her.

One day, two children vanished seemingly without a trace. Many of the villagers blamed Matilda whom they had come to fear, and dragged her from her home to a makeshift gallows in an ancient oak that grew in the center of town. It was there that a Matilda who had been maddened by pain and grief over the betrayal of her neighbors cast a death curse that would have absolutely horrified the kindly woman she used to be.

"What I used to take in kindness, I will take in revenge." Matilda said moments before she was hanged.

Two days after Matilda Dixon's hanging, a young faery guided the pair of missing children out of the Nevernever and into the arms of their loving parents safe and sound as it had been hired to do by Matilda shortly after she realized where the boys could have gone.

Normally curses, even ones such as the one that Matilda cast as she died wouldn't last very long, but this one ended up anchoring itself to her unsuspecting line...


	2. Desperate Calls and Kyle's Return

Caitlin Green sat beside her younger brother Michael's bed. The diminutive eleven year old who had been an unexpected surprise after their parents had long since quit trying for another child had been plagued with ill health for a great deal of his life. While most of his problems were never serious enough to require hospitalization, this one however was. Little Michael Green - plagued by nightmares of the legendary Matilda Dixon - had stopped sleeping altogether. Medicine wasn't helping this problem, and she was ready to turn to anything that might work.

The first thing she tried was calling Kyle Walsh who had been led off by police, claiming the entire time that the Tooth Fairy had killed his mother twelve years earlier. She had hoped that Kyle - who had once been her best friend - would come up and help somehow, or at the very least tell Michael over the phone that there was nothing to be afraid of, but that did not happen. Kyle firmly stated that he had no intention of leaving his home in Las Vegas, and that he did not plan on helping. It was at that point that Caitlin started grasping at straws.

One of Caitlin's friends had gone off to college in Chicago - of all places - and had once written back about a wizard who apparently worked in the city, sending her a photo of the door to the guy's office along with the letter, swearing up and down that it wasn't a joke. Apparently the guy occasionally hung around the campus playing Dungeons and Dragons or something like it with one of Desiree's friends. If anyone could help her brother, it would be a wizard. Even if the guy was a fake, he could whip up some fancy looking "spell" that would reassure her brother somehow, and get him to sleep as Michael was apparently still young enough to believe in magic.

Deciding on a new plan of action, she called her friend to get the number. Fifteen minutes later, she got up the nerve to make the call. After three rings, somebody picked up, and she could just barely hear a voice say "This is Harry Dresden" over the static on the line.

&!&!&

Over in Las Vegas in an apartment that never got dark, a young man who had remained afraid of the dark for over a decade sighed as he put even more batteries in his flashlights in preparation for his journey. Caitlin was his best friend once upon a time, and she needed his help. The doctors in the hospital he'd been forced to stay in until he was sixteen and was released into the foster care system had told him that he would have to face this one day, but he didn't think they had meant it so literally. There was really nothing else he could do. Kyle Walsh, apprentice to the minor mage and master of light spells William Smith, was heading back to Darkness Falls to face the creature that had killed his mother.


	3. Dresden Enters The Picture

I had been nearly thirteen when Justin Du Morne had taken Elaine and I to Massachusetts while he searched for some magical artifact that was reputed to have been there. We had checked into a rather nice little bed and breakfast in a small town called Darkness Falls where I spent a pleasant, if unmemorable afternoon and evening studying while Justin scoured the countryside for his artifact. The next morning, the loose tooth that I had been wiggling for the past week - my final baby tooth if I remember correctly - had finally come out.

I had proudly shown the bloody tooth to Elaine with some inane comment about being almost grown up. I knew not to expect anything more than a compliment from my friend and then future girlfriend, since Justin had made it quite clear that he would not be playing the part of the tooth fairy shortly after he took me in, and had advised me to properly dispose of any teeth I may lose. Justin's reaction to the tooth had been rather unusual to say the least. The man - who had been focused on a book moments earlier - looked over at me in surprise an instant before he dropped the book, raced over, snatched the tooth away, and promptly disposed of it himself as if he believed that I would try to keep it. Back then - unknowing of the danger of doing so - I probably would have. Less than an hour later, we were checked out of the bed and breakfast and speeding down the road at what had to be at least three times the posted speed limit.

The car, which had barely been holding together under the strain of conveying three magical beings, finally gave out two towns over.

I would have thought this incident to have been entirely forgotten, had I not received a call requesting my assistance from the town earlier. A young woman named Caitlin Green had called seeking a spell that would ease her younger brother's fears and enable him to sleep, after traditional medicine had apparently failed. I had almost referred her to a more local witch who specialized in healing despite her assertions that money was no object when it came to her brother's well-being, when she had mentioned something about a local legend. Curious, I had asked for more information. Her response sent me out making my way through the Nevernever to Boston before hopping on a bus after barely taking the time to pack.

Why the Wardens hadn't dealt with this in the century or so it was going on, I do not know. I do know however, that the woman's story was most likely true. The details seemed consistent with something supernatural, especially the part of how the "Tooth Fairy" tended to only take the child's final baby tooth, ignoring all others. Why else would my former teacher have fled from the town after I lost my final baby tooth, if not for the curse?

&!&!&

Kyle Walsh swallowed nervously as the plane took off. While he wasn't as bad as he heard wizards were at disrupting technology - he had to change the batteries in the flashlights he only kept because he wasn't entirely confident with his light spells nightly, and change the bulbs weekly - since he only had a little bit of power, airplanes probably depended on a number of delicate electronic systems to remain in the air, and it would probably be his bad luck that he would end up shorting a critical one and cause the plane to crash.

Kyle did his best to calm himself. When a magic user was stressed they tended to...the little light over his seat shorted out.


End file.
